Boris Otarov was born in Tbilisi in Georgia in 1916. In
1926, his family moved to Moscow and then to Berlin in Germany.
In 1931, they returned to Moscow. In 1936-1941, Boris studied
in the department of physics in the Moscow
State University. In 1941, he voluntarily joined the
Soviet army. Boris took part in the Stalingrad
battle and in the liberation of Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria
and Yugoslavia from the Nazis. When World War II ended in
Europe, he found himself in Vienna, Austria.

In 1946, he joined the staff of the Moscow Power Engineering
Institute and began to work on his Ph.D. thesis. In 1950,
he established ties with artists Pavel Sokolov-Skalya (1899-1961),
Pyotr
Konchalovsky (1876-1956), Martiros
Saryan (1880-1972), Alexander
Kuprin (1880-1960) and Vladimir Weisberg (1924-1985).
As a result, he started to give more of his time and energy
to painting.

In 1952, he decided to abandon science and devote himself
to art. In 1960, he began to teach in the People's University
of Arts in Moscow and then in the All-Union People's Academy
of Arts. He pioneered a unique approach to individual training
in painting. Boris died in Moscow in 1991.

Boris's personal exhibits include those in the Moscow Committee
of Graphic Artists at Malaya Gruzinskaya in Moscow in 1980,
several institutes of the USSR Academy of Science in 1983-1985,
the office of the Decorative Arts journal in Moscow
in 1986, the Culture Foundation in Moscow in 1986, the House
of Architect in Moscow in 1989, the Central House of Artist
in 1994 and in 1996, the exhibition hall of Our
Heritage journal in Moscow in 1998, the State Institute
for Studies in the Arts in Moscow in 2001, the Russian
Gallery in Tallinn in Estonia in 2002, the Russian
Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow in 2006, the Russian
D.Likhachev Research Institute for Cultural and Natural
Heritage in Moscow in 2006, the Roslin Cultural Center in
Moscow in 2006.

Among his most notable group exhibits are those in the
Hotel Drouot in Paris
in France in 1989, the Hotel
Lutetia in Paris in France in 1990, the Hotel Tegnerlunden
in Stockholm in Sweden in 1991, in the municipal gallery
of Bordeaux in France in 1991, the Koleso Group
exhibit in the Belyaevo gallery in Moscow in 1992, Galerie
de l'ancienne Douane in Geneva in Switzerland in 1992,
the German Embassy in Moscow in 1998, the Estonian Embassy
in Moscow in 2000.

Boris's works are found in galleries and private collections
in Russia, France, Sweden, Germany, England, USA, Japan,
Finland, Austria, Estonia, Armenia and other countries.